Environmental assessment of garden waste management in the Municipality of Aarhus, Denmark

An environmental assessment of six scenarios for handling of garden waste in the Municipality of Aarhus (Denmark) was performed from a life cycle perspective by means of the LCA-model EASEWASTE. In the first (baseline) scenario, the current garden waste management system based on windrow composting was assessed, while in the other five scenarios alternative solutions including incineration and home composting of fractions of the garden waste were evaluated.

The environmental profile (normalised to Person Equivalent, PE) of the current garden waste management in Aarhus is in the order of −6 to 8mPEMg−1ww for the non-toxic categories and up to 100mPEMg−1ww for the toxic categories. The potential impacts on non-toxic categories are much smaller than what is found for other fractions of municipal solid waste.

Incineration (up to 35% of the garden waste) and home composting (up to 18% of the garden waste) seem from an environmental point of view suitable for diverting waste away from the composting facility in order to increase its capacity. In particular the incineration of woody parts of the garden waste improved the environmental profile of the garden waste management significantly.